Are your goals SMART?

Do you set your goals? If you do,
are your goals SMART? How do you set them? Setting goals is a great opportunity
to stop wasting time and get things done. Read more here about the benefits of
writing them down.

Overwhelming
yourself with thousands and thousands of goals is not the best of ideas. Yearly
I have one or two main goals that I focus on. However, daily I tend to have
around three time consuming goals, which will take over an hour to complete. In
addition, I would have three to five tasks, which take no longer than half an
hour and onto of a few quick one.

I
set daily goals a night before bed or early in the morning, nothing better than
a quick brainstorming session with hot tea and shortbreads nearby. Taking time
to think what is really important to you can sometimes surprise you. There is
nothing wrong with writing a goal down and scheduling it for next week.

Everyone
is saying how important it is to make your goals SMART. What do they mean
exactly? SMART stands for: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely
goals. The best goals should be specific so you know what you are striving for.
Goals that are too vague do not really send a message of what exactly you want
to accomplish. Measure your progress for further motivation and to be able to
see how marvelously you are doing. Make sure you are able to achieve your goals
and understand how you are going to do it; just saying that you want to be the next
Jane Austin is not enough. Relevancy and realism of the goal and actions is not
only important because of its practicality but it helps you avoid wasting time
for achievable, at least at this point, goals. Deliver your goals by a certain
date. Learning Italian sounds great but when exactly do you want to be able to
communicate in Italian by?

I
would suggest trying dividing your big goal into smaller managable steps. Saying
that you will have a six pack within a month, when your body fact is over 20%
is not realistic and not achievable. Firstly timing is wrong, for me three
months to achieve a six pack would not be enough. This goal would mean that I
am setting myself up for a very hard and long time at the gym, but also for
disappointment. However, what can I do is set a longer time frame for the goal and
aim to achieve a great flatter, less bloated tummy before my holidays. I could
measure it by comparing how many inches more or less I have.

What
would be my SMART goals on the example of this website?

Specific

Create
a website, where I can share my travel, lifestyle, personal development,
reviews and gain new readers.

Measurable

Create
a hundred articles within a year, social media, and have over 10,000.00 viewers
monthly.

Attainable/Actionable/Achievable

Publish
two articles a week and create social media posts: 24 per day on Twitter, at
least one for Instagram.

Relevant/Realistic

Sign
up for a writing course to improve creative writing.

Timely

Achieve
this goal a year from creating website.

Applying
SMART works very well for my daily goals, as instead of writing general goals I
am more to the point. I know when to start, what I want to achieve, and when to
finish. There is nothing more disheartening for me than not seeing the end of
the task. I feel like a hamster in a wheel, and I have to say as cute as they
are I am not enjoying being a hamster. Since I adapted SMART my goals look like
this: schedule social media post for next seven days, schedule three posts: two
about personal development, and one about latest travel. Confusion decreased.

That was my goal too to post twice a week Denise! As you already know I am looking for a new planner. My one ends in June so that's pretty good excuse to buy a new one, don't you think? See you soon, Iga x